Blackdirge Publishing seeks to prove that the spoken word is far more horrid than a sharpened weapon with the latest in their None So Vile series. None So Vile: Disciples of Darkeness IV: Doomsayer, is not the best in the series, but holds its own as another twisted prestige class to create a dark villain. As usual, the exceptional polish and creativity of the publication excel at creating the creepy vibe the publishers entended.

Doomsayer’s are the evil high priests of dark religions. They set aside their mace and shield to spew rhetoric so evil that it harms their opponents and strengthens their followers. The PDF is 14 pages long and very meaty for a PDF. The nuts and bolts of the class takes up the first 6 pages with the remainder of the book focused on the flavor of the class. Knowing the tactics of the class as well as its layers and tendancies is a nice touch and helps further integrate it into a campaign. Reading the material you can walk away with a nice little mini adventure in your head. If you do not, there is a mini encounter towards the last few pages that include an NPC and a side track for your PCs. Its amazing how many prestige class books do not include a sample NPC, so it is refreshing that Blackdirge did. However, because of the low level the prestige class starts, it would have been nicer to have a lower level NPC included.

The cleric class is pretty much the only class worth prestiging into the Doomsayer. The Evil clerics can start taking levels as early as 5th level if designed correctly. Doomsayer’s abilities early in the class are very nicely named, but are simply allotments of various evil spells we have seen before. The class does pick up later with two fairly creative powers, the Unholy Dictum and the Legendary blasphemer.

For the DM
Haunt your pcs with Legendary Blasphemer. This spells makes a nice little additional modification to blasphemy spells cast that really empowers the effect. A cursed little effect to pull on a midlevel party.

The Iron Word
Many of the class abilities are renamed but seen before powers. However, the flavor and additional material of Doomsayer really adds a lot more value to the book. If you want to add a little bit of flavor to a cleric, the Doomsayer is the different route you should take.

Rating:

[4 of 5 Stars!]

Publisher Reply:

Thanks for the nice review. I'm glad the "creepy" flavor came through loud and clear. That's the biggest challenge in writing these things. It's not terribly difficult to create an "evil" prestige class or NPC, but "vile" carries with it a whole different connotation, and that can be hard to pull off convincingly.